Messi reaches 345 goals, the same amount as Maradona in his entire career

Forza wrote:There was potential for a good discussion, but it was ruined by fanboyism.

Sad but true, GL has many fanboys, and a lot of them got exposed in this thread.

Harmonica wrote:

Forza wrote:There was potential for a good discussion, but it was ruined by fanboyism.

Sad but true, GL has many fanboys, and a lot of them got exposed in this thread.

Good to see that you've accepted your part in this.

Forza wrote:

Harmonica wrote:

Forza wrote:There was potential for a good discussion, but it was ruined by fanboyism.

Sad but true, GL has many fanboys, and a lot of them got exposed in this thread.

Good to see that you've accepted your part in this.

I'm the executioner, and I've no problems in it.

Fuchsteufelswild wrote:

]

La Liga used to be the most violent league? Enlighten me. What has changed over the years? It seems to be the softest league these days.

It's actually true. Even Spain's NT used to be very violent as well, hence why they are called La Furia Roja or "The Red Fury" in english. Though, I have no idea how it become such a soft league..

Only 8 away from CRs club total with 130 games less

Fuchsteufelswild wrote:

]

La Liga used to be the most violent league? Enlighten me. What has changed over the years? It seems to be the softest league these days.

Sorry that I didn't reply earlier. It's well known that football used to be rougher but the Spanish in particular seemed to enjoy hurting their opponents, there was just something malicious about them, as opposed to most other leagues where it was a bit more like a "hard but fair" attitude.

I really don't know why they have so profoundly changed, I'm not from Spain so I don't know the details about how their culture evolved. If I were to guess, cruyffs dream team of the early 90s might have helped drag their mentality out of the stone age. To see such a great style of play maybe showed them a different way of playing and what football could be without the thuggish behaviour.


This is Barcelona shortly before maradona arrived. Funny to think that it was the English Tottenham Hotspur with artists like Glenn hoddle trying to play football while it was Barcelona playing like "animals"

kiranr wrote:
The whole thing started when people started slating La Liga in a bid to downplay Messi's achievement. I would say the scope for good discussion was thrown out of the window with those comments in the first page itself.

His achievement is being compared with someone who played mostly in a different league/era. How is it unfair to state that it is easier to score in la liga than it was in the league the player he's compared with played? It's not downplaying messi it's just putting it in its rightful context.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:

Diego Armando Maradona wrote:Maradona was 25 actually in 86 and 21 in 82. The last sentence is such... "gibberish", do you believe that? Maradona was called the best in the world by many people before he'd even won anything. Trophies don't define the calibre of a player

Yeah you're right I got my years off by 1 but he would still not have won the WC in this hypothetical scenario because it's not summer yet. In any case my original point was that if you compare Maradona before his 2nd WC and Messi, it's the latter who clearly wins the comparisons. On titles won alone Messi has 5 leagues, 2 country cups and 3 CLs, while Maradona had 2 leagues and 1 country cup. Obviously titles are not everything, and Maradona didn't have the good fortune of coming up through a top european club's youth, but I doubt anyone was calling Maradona the greatest of all time when he had so little success. The main tenants of the legend of Maradona are the world cup and taking Naples to 2 league titles, and he had achieved neither of those by this stage in his career.

Well greatness is one thing that doesn't come until you achieve something major in your career, which in terms of trophies maradona only did really after the age of 25. In terms of that messi wins the pre-25 comparison, but what does it mean if maradona didn't have the opportunities to win European cups or play for a number of years in a world class team? The fact is maradonas reputation blew up before he won anything, and that shows you how well he was playing when his team's weren't winning titles. He was a multiple s.American player of the year before he even turned 21 beating out a prime zico. So if you had them both playing today like you said I don't think there "would be no question of who is better". I think maradona would have even more fans now than he did then because of the high-resolution replays broadcasters show when someone does something good these days, the artistic aspect is showcased much better nowadays

Equalled Maradona's 34 goals for NT.

Messi 

Make it 35 actually equalled Crespo also as the #2.

Congratulations to him, but we shouldn't use him for games like this. He needs rest.

Pls go Harmonica. Its people like you who make Messi someone hated. We all know he is a GOAT and we can stop there... 
Just stop pls.

Messi is great and all that but no World Cup no GOAT.

The Sanchez wrote:Pls go Harmonica. Its people like you who make Messi someone hated. We all know he is a GOAT and we can stop there... 
Just stop pls.

What?